Federal Conservatives
break all of their international Open Government Partnership
commitments by failing to consult with Canadians about their
draft action plan before meeting in Brazil this
week

Final OGP action plan
due in March 2012 -- will Conservatives fulfill requirements by
strengthening rules and enforcement of the Access to Information
Act, Lobbying
Act, Public
Servants Disclosure Protection Act, Proceeds of Crime
(Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act,Financial
Administration Act, Canada Elections Act
and Conflict of
Interest Act and ethics codes

Monday,
December 5, 2011

OTTAWA - Today, with representatives of 49 countries
including Canada headed to Brasilia, Brazil for the
international Open Government Partnership (OGP) meeting
on December 7-8 to share their draft OGP action plans,
Democracy Watch's Open Government Coalition criticized
the federal Conservative government for failing to keep
its first OGP commitment
to consult
with Canadians before developing its draft OGP
commitments.

The Canadian federal government is eligible to apply for
OGP membership because it has the minimal, required standards
of open and accountable government, and federal
Conservatives committed to joining OGP in a September
19th letter
from John Baird to Hillary Clinton and are required to
share their draft OGP commitment action plan at the
meeting in Brazil.

The public consultation was supposed to begin soon after
the Conservatives signed on to OGP in September, but
there is still no notice of an OGP consultation on the
federal Consulting with Canadians website
and Democracy Watch and the Open Government Coalition as
the main citizen group stakeholders on these issues for
the past 15 years have not been contacted by anyone in
the federal government.

"If the Conservatives
continue to fail to consult with Canadians and try to
spin their largely meaningless open data initiatives
as their action plan, they will be violating their
Open Government Partnership commitments to consult
widely and strengthen the rules and enforcement
systems in federal transparency, ethics,
anti-corruption, lobbying, whistleblower protection,
political finance, and waste prevention laws,"
said Tyler Sommers, Coordinator of Democracy Watch.

"The Open Government
Partnership Steering Committee must reject the
Conservatives membership if they do not consult
broadly or if their action plan does not include
commitments to pass key measures to strengthen the
rules and enforcement of the federal Access to
Information Act, Lobbying Act, Public Servants
Disclosure Protection Act, Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist
Financing Act, Financial
Administration Act, Canada Elections Act, Conflict of Interest
Act and MP and Senate code rules for disclosure of
financial interests, and related Treasury Board codes
and rules," said Duff Conacher, Founding
Director of Democracy Watch.

The federal Lobbying
Act, Public
Servants Disclosure Protection Act, and Conflict of Interest Act
and related MP and Senate ethics
rules are all required to be reviewed by
Parliament in the next six months and Democracy Watch
and its coalitions have been pushing for changes for
years, and opposition MPs and the Information
Commissioner and the Open Government Coalition have been
pushing to strengthen the Access
to Information Act for several years. The Proceeds
of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing
Act must also be strengthened to comply with the
2004 United Nations
Convention Against Corruption. The Canada
Elections Act must be strengthened to close
loopholes that allow for secret, unlimited donations and
loans. The Financial
Administration Act must be strengthened to
tighten up rules on sole-source contracting. And
related Treasury Board codes, policies and rules in all
of the above areas must also be strengthened (To
see more details, click
here).

The question is whether the Conservatives will keep
their OGP commitments to strengthen all of these laws
(they promised to strengthen all these laws in their
2006 election platform, but they broke almost
all of their promises).

The federal Conservatives have failed so far to fulfill
all of the OGP
requirements by failing to give advance notice of
the consultation to develop their OGP plan, failing to
undertake public awareness initiatives to ensure the
public is aware of OGP, failing to consult widely,
failing to make a summary of submissions public, and
failing to establish a multi-stakeholder forum for
ongoing consultation about the implementation of their
OGP action plan, including issuing a public report one
year after their final OGP action is published in March
2012.

In the June 3rd Speech from the Throne, the
Conservatives promised
that "Our Government
will also ensure that citizens, the private sector and
other partners have improved access to the workings of
government through open data, open information and
open dialogue."

The Conservatives have set up the Open Government website
and initiated the Open Data Pilot Project
and continued with so-called Open Dialogue through the
Consulting with Canadians website
established by the Liberals.

However, the only new Open Information initiatives by
the Conservatives are a requirement
that federal government institutions disclose online
summaries of completed access to information requests
(which replicates a database of already-released public
information that used to exist and that the
Conservatives discontinued a few years ago) and a requirement
for online disclosure of financial and non-financial
planning and performance reports (which are already made
public via tabling in Parliament).

In other words, the federal Conservatives have talked a
lot, but done little to make the federal government
actually more open and transparent.

The Open Government Partnership requires governments to
go much further, to sign on to the Open
Government Declaration that commits them to uphold
the value of openness in their engagement with citizens
to improve services, manage public resources, promote
innovation, and create safer communities, to embrace
principles of transparency and open government with a
view toward achieving greater prosperity, well-being,
and human dignity, and to include in their draft OGP
action plan (which is due December 7-8 at the meeting in
Brasilia) and in their final action plan (which is due
March 5-6 at the OGP meeting also in Brasilia) measures,
benchmarks and timelines:

To increase the availability of information about
governmental activities:

to strengthen their commitment to promote
transparency, fight corruption, empower citizens,
and harness the power of new technologies to make
government more effective and accountable;

to systematically collect and publish data on
government spending and performance for essential
public services and activities;

to pro-actively provide high-value information,
including raw data, in a timely manner, in formats
that the public can easily locate, understand and
use, and in formats that facilitate reuse;

to provide access to effective remedies when
information or the corresponding records are
improperly withheld, including through effective
oversight of the recourse process;

to establish open standards to promote civil
society access to public data, as well as to
facilitate the interoperability of government
information systems;

to seek feedback from the public to identify the
information of greatest value to them, and to take
such feedback into account to the maximum extent
possible;

To support civic participation:

to make policy formulation and decision making
more transparent, creating and using channels to
solicit public feedback, and deepening public
participation in developing, monitoring and
evaluating government activities;

to protect the ability of not-for-profit and civil
society organizations to operate in ways consistent
with freedom of expression, association, and
opinion;

to commit to creating mechanisms to enable greater
collaboration between governments and civil society
organizations and businesses.

To implement the highest standards of professional
integrity throughout their administration

to have robust anti-corruption policies,
mechanisms and practices, ensuring transparency in
the management of public finances and government
purchasing, and strengthening the rule of law;

to maintain or establish a legal framework to make
public information on the income and assets of
national, high ranking public officials;

to enact and implement rules that protect
whistleblowers;

to make information regarding the activities and
effectiveness of anticorruption prevention and
enforcement bodies, as well as the procedures for
recourse to such bodies, available to the public,
respecting the confidentiality of specific law
enforcement information;

to increase deterrents against bribery and other
forms of corruption in the public and private
sectors, as well as to share information and
expertise.

To increase access to new technologies for openness and
accountability

to harness these new technologies to make more
information public in ways that enable people to
both understand what their governments do and to
influence decisions;

to develop accessible and secure online spaces as
platforms for delivering services, engaging the
public, and sharing information and ideas;

to seek increased online and mobile connectivity,
while also identifying and promoting the use of
alternative mechanisms for civic engagement;

to engage civil society and the business community
to identify effective practices and innovative
approaches for leveraging new technologies to
empower people and promote transparency in
government;

to support and develop the use of technological
innovations by government employees and citizens
alike;

- to report publicly on
actions undertaken to realize these principles;
- to consult with the public on implementation, and to
update commitments in light of new challenges and
opportunities, and;
- to commit to espouse these principles in
international engagement, and work to foster a global
culture of open government that empowers and delivers
for citizens, and advances the ideals of open and
participatory 21st century government.

Democracy Watch's Open Government Coalition, Government
Ethics Coalition and Money in
Politics Coalition will continue to push the
federal Conservatives to fulfill all of their Open
Government Partnership OGP commitments in their final
action plan, and if they don't will appeal to the OGP
Steering Committee to reject the Conservative
government's membership in OGP.

- 30 -

FOR MORE
INFORMATION, CONTACT:Tyler Sommers, Coordinator of
Democracy Watch and Chairperson of the Open
Government Coalition
Duff Conacher, Founding Director of Democracy WatchTel: (613)
241-5179